Summary
A Key Step in Securing a Position in the Industrial Chain
On the evening of October 8, Lopal Tech announced that its secondary holding subsidiary, Nanjing Liyuan, has reached a five-year strategic cooperation framework with Zhejiang ENERGEE Energy Technology.
From 2026 to 2030, Nanjing Liyuan and its affiliated production entities will supply 378,600 to567,800 tons of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode materials to ENERGEE.
The execution of orders is based on comprehensive compliance with price, delivery time, quality, and technical standards. Actual shipments will be subject to formal orders, and the unit price of products will be negotiated and adjusted monthly in accordance with raw material market trends.
01 Geely's Self-Developed Batteries Accelerate in Production Volume
The other party to this cooperation, ENERGEE, is the core vehicle for the strategic integration of Geely Group's battery business.
It undertakes the R&D and mass production of the Shield Golden Brick battery, directly serving mainstream passenger car models such as Geely Galaxy. As a typical automaker self-developed battery entity, its procurement logic and supply chain standards are completely different from those of market-oriented battery manufacturers.
From the perspective of industry installation data, ENERGEE's business is in the stage of scaling up. From January to August 2026, the cumulative installed capacity reached 11.72 GWh, and it already possesses considerable mass production supporting capabilities.
This is also the second time this year that Geely has locked in upstream battery materials: just two months ago, Jike Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd., a secondary subsidiary of Geely Technology Group, signed a long-term cooperation agreement with Guocheng Mining for lithium carbonate, agreeing to purchase battery-grade lithium carbonate from August 2026 to July 2036.
From securing lithium salt resources through subsidiaries to finalizing large-scale LFP framework orders at the core battery platform, Geely's intention to deploy upstream lithium battery materials is very clear.
Geely has been deploying in the battery field for a long time, which can be traced back to the acquisition of Shandong Hengyuan New Energy in 2014.
After years of investment, Geely has now built five major battery bases and plans to form a production capacity of 70 GWh by 2027. On the technology front, it is focusing on the Shield Short Blade and Golden Brick series batteries based on the LFP route.
As Geely's self-developed battery capacity continues to expand, the procurement demand for high-compaction-density LFP will continue to be released, and high-performance LFP will become its procurement focus in the coming years.
02 Upgrade of Lopal Tech's Customer Landscape
For Lopal Tech, signing long-term orders itself is not rare.
Since 2025, Lopal Tech has frequently secured multiple long-term supply agreements. Its customer matrix covers a group of leading power battery manufacturers, including CATL's (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited) overseas factories, EVE Energy's Malaysia base, Sunwoda's Thailand base, and Cornex New Energy.
The particularity of this order lies not in the intended supply volume, but in Lopal Tech's formal entry into the supply chain of domestically self-built batteries by automakers, completing an important supplementary iteration of its own customer types.
Reviewing Lopal Tech's past long-term agreements reveals its historical business foundation clearly: orders are primarily focused on overseas markets, with the logic revolving around large-scale supply chain integration.
Relying on the Liyuan Asia-Pacific base in Indonesia, Lopal Tech has caught the industrial wave of lithium battery capacity going overseas, continuously serving a group of overseas-bound battery enterprises such as LG Energy Solution and CATL's overseas branches.
The advantage of this approach is very direct: using overseas orders to absorb new capacity and avoiding the fierce homogeneous price war in the domestic market.
In the domestic market, it relies on the million-ton-level large framework with Cornex New Energy to support the production launch and capacity ramp-up of bases in Nanjing, Sichuan, Hubei, and other regions.
Earlier in early 2025, Lopal Tech announced the news of entering Ford's overseas supply chain, which could be considered as reaching the overseas automaker system. However, the project did not disclose specific volumes and implementation details, remaining more at the strategic positioning level.
In other words, prior to this, Lopal Tech's implementable and quantifiable long-term orders basically came from third-party battery manufacturers.
The logic for third-party cell enterprises to procure materials is very unified: prioritizing capacity, cost, and delivery stability.
Material manufacturers mostly participate in price comparison with standardized products, acting more like capacity suppliers, with very limited room for deep binding and technological iteration.
During the industry's supply shortage phase, this model was sufficient to support rapid volume expansion for enterprises. However, against the broader backdrop of LFP overcapacity, the scale advantage is diminishing.
After this cooperation, Lopal Tech's downstream landscape will be upgraded from the previous dual-wheel model of overseas battery manufacturers and domestic third-party battery manufacturers to a three-dimensional structure of overseas markets, third-party battery manufacturers, and automakers' self-developed battery platforms.
On the one hand, Lopal Tech can rely on Geely's battery platform to refine high-compaction LFP products and accumulate engineering capabilities for automaker support; on the other hand, it can also diversify customer structure risks, reduce single dependence on the battery manufacturer system, and pave the way for subsequent expansion to more automaker customers.
Of course, it is not by chance that Lopal Tech can get this ticket to the mainstream automaker's self-developed battery system.
The resource layout of upstream lithium mines and joint-venture lithium carbonate can help hedge against raw material cycle fluctuations; the multi-base capacity layout guarantees cross-regional delivery capabilities; and the stable cash flow from the parent company's traditional business is also sufficient to support the long-cycle automaker certification and phased low-margin supporting.
03 The New Round of LFP Competition Rules Has Changed
What needs to be viewed rationally is that this signing belongs to a strategic cooperation framework and is not a rigid guaranteed contract.
The five-year volume of 378,600 to 567,800 tons has a range difference of nearly 190,000 tons. The span between the upper and lower limits is essentially Geely's flexible expectation for future battery capacity and vehicle model sales.
Without a guaranteed procurement volume, the execution of all orders depends on annual price competitiveness and delivery performance.
The model of monthly price adjustment can transmit the rise and fall of raw materials, but cannot lock in profits.
In the current context of continuous involution in the industry, the key to determining corporate profitability remains the processing fee.
Even if orders are executed, there is still uncertainty in the profit margin. Lopal Tech's upstream lithium resource layout can smooth out part of the cycle, but phosphorus and iron sources still rely on external procurement, making it impossible to completely avoid the industry price war.
This also highlights the current competitive turning point in the LFP industry.
In the past, the industry competed in speed, capacity, and scale. As the scale dividend peaks, the new competition in the industry will be about who has a better customer structure and who can squeeze into a higher-level supply chain.
For Lopal Tech, the value of this order does not lie in short-term revenue.
The more critical significance lies in obtaining the ticket to the mainstream automaker's self-developed battery system.
This is an important step to break free from low-end price comparison involution and complete the positioning in the industrial chain.